Governor Abbott rose abruptly to his feet.
"This interview is at an end, Colonel Broadcastle," he said, bringing his fist down upon the table with a thud. "I take exception to your remarks, from first to last. I consider myself fully competent to deal with the situation, and you may depend, sir, I shall do so at my own time, and in my own way. If Mr. Peter Rathbawne supposes that he can defy reason and justice at will, and that the state authorities are prepared to support him, he is grossly and fatally mistaken. Gentlemen, I have the honor to bid you good-day!"
For a quarter-minute, the two men stood facing each other, without speaking. It was observable that the eyes of neither flinched. Then--
"It is my earnest hope, Elijah Abbott," said the Colonel slowly, "to see you impeached by a righteously indignant community, and committed for a term of years to the State"s Prison at Mowberly, for rank malfeasance in office!"
The Governor shrugged his shoulders.
"Your record and your position protect you, Colonel Broadcastle," he said, with something of his usual suavity. "Will you have the goodness to retire?"
As the Citizens" Committee left the room the Lieutenant-Governor turned on his heel, pa.s.sed into his office, and closed the door.
For a long time he sat motionless at his desk, with his temples in his hands, staring at a frame upon the opposite wall, which contained the emblazoned arms of Alleghenia. These were a hand holding even balances, upon a circular shield, supported by the nude figures of two young men, representing Art and Labor. Above, upon a scroll, were the words, "_Just.i.tia. Lex. Integritas._"
It was not only bad heraldry, but indifferently appropriate symbolism.
IX
THE NINTH Pa.s.sES IN REVIEW
The huge armory of the Ninth, transformed, by the same system which had metamorphosed the _personnel_ of the regiment itself, from a gaunt, barn-like structure, ill-fitted to its purpose in all but size, to the most cheerful, as well as the most completely equipped, of Alleghenian a.r.s.enals, was blazing with light and echoing to the sound of many voices. A steady stream of people poured in at the heavy doors, now standing wide, but significant, with their great timbers, elaborate locks and bolts, and precautionary peep-holes, of the possibility of an att.i.tude less hospitable. Threading their way at a rapid pace through the more sluggish main current of the crowd, the members of the regiment, in an infinite variety of civilian attire,--from tweeds and knickerbockers to top-hats and evening-dress,--sought their respective company-rooms, vanished therein, and, presently, reappeared in uniform.
It was as if behind those ten doors which lined the upper corridor there were as many moulds, identical in form, where-into this perplexing diversity of raw material was plunged on entering, to be drawn forth again in a constant reduplication of militiamen.
As the hour for the review drew near, the proportion of these to the throng with which they mingled, perceptibly increasing, seemed, little by little, to leaven the whole lump. The dress-uniform of the Ninth was everywhere, the black shakos and epaulettes, white pompons, cross-belts and gloves, and multiplicity of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, lending the immense a.s.semblage a singular spirit and vivacity.
On the floor of the drill-room the people spread in all directions, fan-like, from the main doorway, the mult.i.tudinous footfalls mounting murmurously into the s.p.a.ces of the lofty roof, where forty arc-lights hung, dizzily suspended, pallid in the thin haze of dust swung upwards from the hurrying feet of the thousands below.
"Precisely like an army of ants--and every one of them with an uncle or two, and a round dozen of nephews and nieces!" said Mrs. Wynyard.
She and the Rathbawne girls were looking down upon the drill-floor from the balcony of the Colonel"s room. Broadcastle and the Lieutenant-Governor were deep in conversation inside, having seized the delay in the arrival of Governor Abbott as an opportunity for a few words in private.
"How funny they are, scuttling along, all of them!" said Dorothy. "And how immensely pleased the favored ones are, who have a soldier to show them the way. I see a distinct difference in their walk from that of the others, don"t you, Natalie? They seem to be saying "_We_ were _invited_--and by this splendiferous creature at our side!" See how they strut! And look at the soldierless ones, how timidly they go--just as if they had found their tickets in the street, or had crept in through the bas.e.m.e.nt windows. "Please, kind Mr. Soldier-man, let us stay and see the show. We"ll be _awf"ly_ good!""
"How preposterous you are, Dorothy!" answered Mrs. Wynyard. "Look! The people are taking to the sides of the room already, and the companies are forming. What astonishing method and precision there is to it all!
Do you suppose each man has a little circle marked on the floor, to show just where he is to stand?"
"I haven"t the most remote doubt of it," said Natalie, with a smile,--"and his name neatly lettered inside it with gilt paint!"
The long, enclosed racks at the ends of the drill-room were open now, and the electric light winked upon the barrels of the Springfields, as busy, white-gloved hands plied the polishing cloths along them. The enormous drill-floor, cleared as if by magic from the disorderly weed-growth which had enc.u.mbered it, began to make manifest its proper crop--long lines of gray and white, like sprouting sage, at first but a dot here and there, to indicate the direction, then a scattering, then distinct clumps, finally a thick, serried row. In the distance, a bugle sounded, followed by a long ruffle of drums, and Colonel Broadcastle stepped quickly to the window of the balcony.
"There"s the Governor," he said. "Will you come in? I"ll send my orderly to show you to your seats."
At the same moment, the door from the corridor opened, and the orderly entered, his hand at his shako.
"Sir, the Governor has arrived."
Then, as the trio on the balcony stepped in through the window, he turned suddenly and superlatively scarlet. As has been said, young Nisbet was accustomed to getting what he wanted. In this instance what he had wanted happened to be that the Adjutant should choose him from the guard detail as Colonel"s orderly. To be thus chosen was to be admittedly the most immaculate of thirty men, all more immaculate than a thousand immaculate others. The thing was not easy of achievement, but Dorothy Rathbawne was to be present at the review, and so--there was no second way about it--it simply had to be done. Young Nisbet"s way of doing it was an absolutely new uniform and gold-plated b.u.t.tons and accoutrements. Extravagance? Vanity? Perhaps! But at the present moment, he was wearing one cross-belt where his thousand and odd comrades were wearing two. There was no answer to such an argument as that.
Colonel Broadcastle had reserved seats for the party on the temporary reviewing stand, and, five minutes after they had taken their places, the bugles sang again, a curt order--""shun! "shun!"--ran in varying intonations from company to company, and the slack gray ranks before them stiffened into absolute rigidity. Then from the broad hallway beyond came a tremendous burst of sound, and, to the strains of the famous old march of the Ninth, the regimental band swung into view, followed by Governor Abbott and Colonel Broadcastle and the former"s staff.
To the Lieutenant-Governor, but newly returned from his wearisome round of the state armories, much of what followed was so stale as to be no more than a constantly increasing strain upon nerves already overtaxed.
He deliberately allowed his attention to wander, until he felt rather than actually perceived the steady tramp-tramp of the men, swinging, fours right, into column, the occasional "hep! hep!" of an officious file-closer, the endless succession of fours winking past him, like the palings of a gray fence seen from the window of a train, the intervals narrowed by short-step, widening again at the "Forward--_march_!" the blare of the band, lessening as it approached the further end of the building, then suddenly bursting into its former volume at the right-about. He endured it all listlessly. It was tediously familiar, stamped upon his brain by repet.i.tion after repet.i.tion.
Moreover, he was completely f.a.gged, and unutterably oppressed by his burden of discouragement. The old wounds, in part healed by his recent absence from the immediate vicinity of his constant discomfiture, had been re-opened and set bleeding afresh by Governor Abbott"s treatment of the Citizens" Committee. Whatever lingering hope had remained in his mind of peace with honor for the troubled capital of Alleghenia, seemed to have been effectually dispelled by that interview. The most enduring charity, the most fatuous credulity, the blindest partisanship--even these could not have preserved a last spark of confidence in Elijah Abbott. Still less was Barclay"s indeterminate hope of the ultimate triumph of right able to stand against such crushing evidence of its instability. It was no longer a question of suspicions, of precedents, of deductions from the significance of a host of former misdoings. Out of his own mouth was the Governor convicted. "At my own time, and in my own way," he had said. It was a phrase, nothing more, and could be boiled down until its whole purport was contained in one word--Never!
"Fours _left_--_March_! Compan_ee_--_halt_!"
The entire regiment, as one man, swung from column of fours into battalion front, halted, and then--cr-r-rick! boooo-m-m-m!--came to order arms. The sides of the room were lined with a solid rampart of white and gray and gold. Barclay was aware of the First Sergeants, scurrying from their positions to report, of their voices, and those of the Majors and the Adjutant, and, finally the Colonel:--
"Take your post, sir!"
But his thoughts were anywhere and everywhere else. What a farce it all was, this life which he was leading, this mental and moral martyrdom to an impossible hope, this eternal and heart-sickening ordeal of hope deferred, this waiting, waiting, waiting, for something which never would and never could happen! Rotten, rotten to the core, this state for which he would have given his heart"s blood, and not only rotten, but not caring a whit for her rottenness--glorying rather, in her own degradation. The chief executive had flung back into their very faces the appeal to his conscience of the most influential men in Kenton City; the police, even now seated about their station stoves, were sniggling at the predicament of the public which paid them for its protection against precisely the kind of thing which they openly tolerated and encouraged; yes, and even the militia, the guarantee of law and order, Broadcastle"s own command, were decked out in tinsel and pipeclay, strutting to music in a palpable bid for applause and admiration. And yonder--the tide of anarchy was slowly but surely rising about the Rathbawne Mills, presaging riot, bloodshed, G.o.d alone knew what!--but one thing, inevitably,--the absolute downfall of dignity and rout of decency in Alleghenia!
Suddenly, his old intrepid spirit of resolution rea.s.serted itself, but doubtfully, like the flame of a lamp flaring once out of dimness before it dies forever. Was it for this that he had devoted the best thought of his youth and his earlier manhood to plans for the betterment of his state? Should he now, at this, the hour of her supremest political and moral peril, desert her as irredeemable, and join the ranks of those who sneered at her, and pointed mocking fingers at her shame and nakedness?
"Your loquacity faintly suggests that of a mummy," said Natalie, at his side.
"I was alone with my thoughts," answered the Lieutenant-Governor, turning to her with an attempt at a smile, "and pretty black ones they were, at that!"
"Alleghenia again?"
"Alleghenia again--and always. This business is becoming an obsession with me. I haven"t had a chance to tell you, and I can"t very well explain now. I"ll have to leave it till I see you to-morrow. But something happened to-day which drove another nail--and one of the last!--into the coffin of my faith. There"s not a gleam of hope anywhere."
"Don"t you see hope in all this?" asked Natalie, with a little, indicative gesture toward the scene before them. "Somehow, it is impressing me tremendously to-night--more than ever before. I seem to understand better what it means, what it stands for."
"It"s a stale enough story with me," said Barclay. "Remember, I"ve been doing just about nothing but watch this kind of thing for the past two weeks. After all, what does it amount to but a thousand possibilities parading like peac.o.c.ks?"
"How unlike you, that speech! It amounts to a vast deal more than that, Johnny boy,--oh, infinitely more! I don"t speak of the other regiments you have seen. This is different. Well, what _does_ it amount to? Who and what are these thousand peac.o.c.ks of yours? Aren"t they the very flower of Kenton City, the youngest and best blood in our veins, gathered by one good man"s will into an organization of sterling loyalty, with one great aim in view, and that the support and protection and preservation of all that is best in Alleghenia? The very fact that such a body of men exists among us is in the nature of a guarantee, it seems to me, that we shall come out all right in the end. Have you noticed their faces?--many of them so absurdly boyish, all of them so honest, and manly, and--and--_American_, John! They are the personifications of your ideal of that afternoon in the library--Americans, and something more--Alleghenians! And, to prove it, they are freely giving a portion of their time and their strength, in order that there may be at least one thing in Kenton City which is without fear and without reproach. I wonder--I wonder, John, whether it isn"t the old story, after all: whether you haven"t been wandering all over the world, like the prince in the fairy-book, looking for the magic talisman that is to save the state you love, while, all the time, it has been lying at your very door? Oh, this means something--I"m too stupid to interpret it as you could--but I know it"s there, and that it would help you and encourage you. Let me try. Look there! A single purpose animates them all--the maintenance of the standard which Colonel Broadcastle set for them, and the record they have made for themselves."
Colonel Broadcastle"s voice was sweeping the armory, as he put the regiment through the manual of arms.
"One has only to hear one of them--Mr. Nisbet, for example--say "the Ninth" to find the hope of which you are in search. These men say it as others say "G.o.d" or "my mother"--as you yourself, Johnny boy, say "Alleghenia.""
"Charge--_bay"n"ts_!"
With a single click, a thousand rifles fell into position, a thousand left feet smote the floor in unison, and the light rippled and twinkled along a solid line of flashing steel.
"There! A single voice,--a single, mighty response! Don"t you see the wonderful suggestiveness of it? Don"t you feel the presence of the enormous reserve force which lies behind all this? Oh, believe me, John, this is a weapon too mighty to lie unused, and too intelligent to be misused, if the worst come to the worst. After all, as no one knows better than yourself, it"s not your own advancement you"re looking for, it"s that of the state. Well, there may be other agencies, perhaps entirely independent of you or of your influence, but none the less invaluable. For example, you are close upon despair--and yet, before your fears come true, the forces of wrong will have to fight their way, step by step, through this rampart of American manhood!"
Barclay touched her hand lightly, as she ceased speaking. In the midst of the thousands about them, they were alone as they had never been before.
"Thank you," he said simply. "Thank you, littlest and wisest in the world!"